End User Observations

Template for new entries

severe character set problems

Tables columns containing non-ASCII characters in their name are improperly named in OOo.

Severity: required

Reason: C/OOo is flooded with OUString::createFromAscii usage, not only for column names. It seems that C/Cpp has a 8-bit api, and conversion from/to those API often happens assuming an ASCII encoding, sometimes using an encoding set at the connection (where I currently do not know where it originates from).

I'd say we have a serious problem here.

Binary columns are reported as text

Columns of type "LONG (VAR)BINARY" are reported as "LONG (VAR)CHAR" in the table designer

Severity: required

Reason: MySQL-internally, binary columns re-use existing types, e.g. MYSQL_TYPE_VAR_STRING for a VARBINARY column. The fact that the column is not text, but binary, is recorded in an additional per-column flag, where the BINARY_FLAG bit is set.
Unfortunately, this information is not transported via C/Cpp. Instead, the DATA_TYPE column of DatabaseMetaData.getColumns returns the untouched MYSQL_TYPE_, which alone is not sufficient to determine the proper column type.

Suggested solution: Either, DatabaseMetaData.getColumns must return additional information, e.g. an additional result set column, taking the column flags. Alternatively, the content of the DATA_TYPE column returned in getColumns must be "normalized", so that VARBINARY and VARCHAR in fact have different data types.

I'd somehow prefer the latter, as this is more future-proof. Also, since C/Cpp claims to have a JDBC-compliant API, it would be the better solution: In JDBC, DATA_TYPE is defined to contain a value from the java.sql.Types class, which already is a normalization we need ...

Wrong column width reported for text/binary columns

reported by Ulf on 09/01/2009 - needs review

We discussed this before and it might be fixed in the current source, but I work on an older snapshot. We return number of bytes, OO.org wants number of characters. A typical follow-up error is that copying tables may fail and/or give wrong results.

Renaming a view not possible

Tested with the native driver: Its not possible to rename a view, the UI does not offer the context menu item when selecting the view in the table list.

Severity: desired

Reason: missing SDBCX support of the driver. In general, tables can only be renamed when there is a css.sdbcx.Table object representing a single table, which supports the XRename interface.

(JDBC) Renaming a view "makes" it a table

reported by Ulf on 09/01/2009 - needs review

Tested with the JDBC driver. Create a view and rename it in Base. Base changes the icon in the table list and shows the renamed object as a table :-)

Severity: low

Reason: unknown

Removing records from views fails

reported by Ulf on 08/01/2009

Removing records from SQL views neither works with the JDBC driver nor with the native driver. Base sends a misformed query like: "DELETE FROM `test`.`v` W"

Severity: low

Reason: Removing records from views is in general not possible in Base. The fact that "Edit/Delete record" is enabled for a view (as in any table which the user does not have the DELETE privilege for) is a bug, which I fixed in the CWS.

Empty schemata not shown

Create an empty schemata/database. Create a new Base database which connects to an empty MySQL database. The MySQL database is not shown.

OOo shows unrelated databases/schemata

Create a new Base database that connects to a MySQL schemata "test". Have "test" in the connection settings! OOo will ignore it and query MySQL for all tables in all schematas, and also display all those tables.

As a consequence the user will see all schemata he has access to not only the schemata/database "test" as requested in the connection settings

Severity: desired

No default schema on table creation

Base does not preselect a default schema in the table editor dialog. Its does not even if you connect to a certain schema by specifying it in the connection settings.

Severity: desired

No way to set MySQL specific table attributes

The Base table editor does not give access to table attributes. Not even basic ones such as the Engine (MyISAM: non-transactional, InnoDB: transactional).

Severity: 1.1

Base does not recognize schema changes

After connecting to a database and opening a table once, Base will not recognize changes applied to the DB schema meanwhile when opening the table in the table editor again.

Severity: low

that's not nice, but consistent with other DB/Drivers. For this purpose, there's View/Refresh Tables ...

Table column comments not synced between MySQL and Base

Base table column comments are not synchronized with the MySQL DB and its schema. Existing comments are not displayed in Base, and entering comments in the table editor is not propagated to MySQL.

Severity: later

That's a known issue with all database types. The column description as displayed in Base is purely client-side, and stored within the .odb file only. There's also an issue for this, but I'm too lazy too search for it right now ...

Violation of FK constraint gives two errors instead of one

Create two tables. Have one table "derived" reference entries in the other table "source". Try to remove a referenced record from the table "source". MySQL will report an error stating that you are violating a FK constrain. When using the MySQL JDBC driver the Base shows one requester with stating something like "Error - (error message from MySQL)". When using the native driver you get an requester stating "error" and you can proceed to an error details dialog. In the details dialog you will find two errors. The first has no message, the second shows the error message provided by MySQL.

This is a common pattern. Cause any SQL error and you can see up to three errors when you quit the initial requester using the button "more". Quite annoying, for example, when writing SQL statements for a Base "Query" object.

Severity: undecided

The empty error message is ugly, but not the only one within Base, so that's nothing which will block an 1.0 release ... (Ulf) But why does it work fine with the JDBC driver?

Default values not properly processed

Again, this is a known issue. The default value displayed in the UI is a so-called "control default", which is applied to controls used to enter data into the given field. The DB-side default for a column is a different property, API-wise, and currently not evaluated at all. Probably not even properly fetched by most existing drivers.

Changing this is possible, but probably requires UI changes. First, we would need to define how the control default and the DB default should interact in the UI. A possible scenario would be to drop the UI support for the control default, and always use the DB default (even in controls), as long as the driver supports providing/accepting DB defaults.

BIGINT values crippled

Large BIGINT values are displayed in Base using scientific notation: 1e+15. If one changes the display format to number #.### the first 14 values of a large number (9223372036854775807) are displayed properly but then some rounding takes place, for example: 9223372036854800000. Connector/C++ can handle long long (L64) values properly and Base does use getLong() nevertheless the displayed value seems wrong.

Severity: undecided

I bet that's because of the number formatter ... processing numbers for display is done using a office-wide number formatter component. Unfortunately, it works with double-precision values only, which imposes a precision loss for certain values. This applies to "too-large" values, as well as fractional values with "too many" digits. This is a general problem in Base, and not limited to the MySQL Native Driver.

A possible solution would be to 'not employ the number formatter for certain column types. (Effectively, this means not using a FormattedField for the respective table column in the data view, but a NumericField, which internally works with long integer values of arbitrary (?) length.) This would solve the BIGINT issue, though not the too-many-digits issue for fractional values.

Tools -> User Administration does not work

When you choose Tools/User administration..., you're presented with an error.

query wizard shows 'query' as 'table'

create any query, open query wizard → tables listbox propose query (also with the other wizards)

Severity: required

Reason: unknown

Developer Observations

This section collects observations interesting for developers only. It's likely the describe the root cause for another problem listed in the End User Observations section. In this sense, they might be duplicates, but we currently just use this as reminder list whenever we notice a problem ...

information_schema (I_S) not shown in schema list

SHOW DATABASES shows the I_S. When quering the I_S for schema, the I_S will not expose itself. Different versions of Connector/C++ use different ways to fetch schema lists. Until and including Alpha SHOW DATABSES is used.

When using the JDBC driver and specifying no database in the connection URL no schemata are shown at all.

Severity: undecided

DatabseMetaData::getColumns() COLUMN_SIZE

Note: DisplaySize is not the same as ColumnSize. The former is a hint for UI processors which are to display the data in a tabular way. Currently, Base does not make use of this attribute.
The ColumnSize's semantics is described in the Java API, and Base uses it in the very same semantics.
As a consequence, COLUMN_SIZE is what needs to be tweaked.

DatabseMetaData::getColumns() DECIMAL_DIGITS

DatabseMetaData::getColumns() does not set DECIMAL_DIGITS. Therefore, Base does not show it properly.

Perfoemance problem when accessing big tables

Open a table with more then 1000 rows. Jump to last one. => 2 min.

Severity: required

Potential Issues

This section serves as collection of issues which might become a problem to end users, though we did not yet (bother to) create scenarios where users are hit by those (potential) problems.

TIME value range

TIME data type may have a significantly larger value range than the Base counterpart.

TINYINT / BOOLEAN

fixed

Tools -> Relations... not working

FIXED: Error message: Database not support relations.
ERROR: Still not possible to create new relations.

We should hint MySQL users in the driver documentation that Base takes no(?) measures to clean up no longer needed indexes. MySQL's InnoDB needs some special treatment.

Severity: required

With 3.x, Base is able to administrate MySQL's relationships (via the ODBC/JDBC bridge), so the native driver should be able to do this, too. At least with approximately the same set of bugs as the "old" driver :)

insert data in table not possible

Investigation: The driver currently returns an empty result set when being asked for the table privileges: getTablePrivileges( null, "schema", "table" ). Debugging deeper seems to indicate that parsing the result of a "SHOW GRANTS" query is flawed.

Tools->SQL does not show error message

reported by Ulf on 08/01/2009

Open the SQL execution wizard by invoking Tools->SQL. Run an invalid SQL query, for example, "create table foo". Base prints a new line "n:" in the status part of the window but it shows no error message.

Severity: required

New tables shown after "refresh tables" but (delete) rights/grants wrong?

reported by Ulf on 08/01/2009

Create some tables in MySQL. Start Base and browse the table list. Create a new table in MySQL (not in Base!), make sure it has a PK, add some records. Select View->Refresh tables. Base will show the new table. Try to remove a row from the newly created table. Base rejects the delete operation stating that the user as insufficient rights.

Investigation: This is a general problem currently, DatabaseMetaData::getTablePrivileges returns wrong data (all the time? sometimes? andrey claimed to have fixed this, but the fix does not work for me). If I fake the getTablePrivileges implementation to return the full set of privileges regardless the table being asked for, then the problem does not happen.

DECIMAL shown as TEXT

Base shows numerical DECIMAL columns as TEXT (in the table editor?).

Severity: required

Investigation: column is reported as MYSQL_TYPE_NEWDECIMAL, which wasn't covered in C/OOo (which only had a case for MYSQL_TYPE_DECIMAL)

Subforms do not work

Well, some of them do ... more precisely, SQL statements with named parameters (":param_name") do not work in general. The ODBC/JDBC driver wrapper used to replace them with unnamed parameters ("?"), since MySQL does not understand them, but the native driver does not do this, yet. Since subforms usually make heavy use of such named parameters, they currently fail.

Severity: required

Fixing this should be easy, at least so it is as usable as with other DBs/drivers, in particular with the existing MySQL-(O/J)DBC bridge. Before sending statements to the server, the driver must replace (unless the statement's EscapeProcessing is FALSE, of course) named parameters with anonymous ones. The disadvantage is that this only works when Base itself can parse the statement, and that it potentially changes the statement. However, both statements are true for all other DBs which do not support named parameters, too.

SMALLINT shown as REAL

When loading a table with a SMALLINT column it is shown as a FLOAT/REAL column in Base (in the table editor?)